In the future, one man’s disillusion with humantity has
led to a global catastrophe. The Earth
is mostly underwater, with what little of humanity is left struggling to
survive. And if that wasn’t bad enough,
mutant creations of the man who doomed humanity are seeking to finish what the
flooding started. The Blue Fleet, an
alliance of Navy from across the globe, are all that stand between humanities
salvation and annihilation. Their
flagship, Blue Submarine No.6, is at the head of the charge but it cant win
without a little extra help. Will a
jaded mercenary and an idealistic rookie be what humanity needs to begin a new
future?
I can still remember when the ads first aired for Blue
Submarine No.6 on Toonami ages ago. It
looked like anything unlike what I’d seen before. The animation looked amazing, the mood felt
darker than what was being aired. It was
edgy, new and waiting for me to watch it.
So how does it hold up now compared to then?
Right off the bat, the animation impresses. Unlike some of the other titles ive covered
which have featured an unbalanced mix of 3D and 2D animation (COUGH COUGH
ESCAFLOWNE COUGH), Blue Sub 6 has no real problem with this. In fact it doesn’t surprise me if the
animation of this OVA was the example other future Anime followed when making
the transition from hand drawn animation to digital. The 3D scenes are a lot of fun to watch
unfold. Underwater combat is something I
haven’t seen too much of in Anime, at least when it comes to submarines. There wasn’t too much of it in these first
too much but man you could feel the pounding and intensity of the missile
impacts and cannon fire. The designs of
the Grampus and Blue Submarine No.6 itself aren’t too shabby either. I love the look of the Zorndyke Phantom Ship
best though. It’s look matches it’s
name. Complete with a shroud of spooky mist, this thing instills proper
terros could easily wipe out a fleet single handidly. In fact, why doesn’t it just do that? It seemed to be doing just a fine job tearing
through Blue Fleet’s defenses in Episode 2 with no problem. Why does it need backup from weaponized
whales (Aquaman’s crying right now?)
Cool mecha designs and impressive animation can only get
a show so far. From the get go, one
thing that bothered me about the story is one burning question, Why? Why does Blue Submarine No.6 need Hayame, why
makes him so special? What makes Blue
Submarine No.6 so special to be flagship (Hayme does offer a good point that if
it’s important they should lock the ship away in a vault)? Why the hell did no one notice that Blue Sub
6 was trailing green lights right back to it’s base? And why hasn’t Zorndyke tried that
before? Nothing is really explained in
these first two episodes beyond the plan of attack for the next chapter and a
little bit of Zorndyke’s displaced faith in humanity, yet he doesn’t call
himself God. And that would be ok, except
for one tiny problem: this is a 4 episode OVA.
Which means if anything is going to be explained properly, it will have
to be potentially frontloaded into the finale and that could be messy. This is a far cry from the last 4 part story
I tackled (Macross Plus, which ended up with a rare 10/10 from me if you’ll
recall). The story needs a Hail Mary
next week to sell me on a possible solid finale.
And with Blue Fleet apparently destroyed in a “surprise”
(come on, no one does a sweep for lights?)
attack from the Phantom Ship, it does beg one further question, maybe
2. One: are we even going to get a slam
bang finale of epic battleship proportions?
And Two: If Hayme is the only survivor, what the hell is he gonna do now
stranded at the bottom of the ocean? Not
a bad cliffhanger, now let’s see if the show can bring it back next week.
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